IBM has announced a blockchain technology that will be used by seven European banks, to facilitate international trade for small and medium-size enterprises.

Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Societe Generale and Unicredit are part of the consortium.

IBM is building this new blockchain, Digital Trade Chain, to help parties track, manage and transact internationally. The tech solution will be built on Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain framework, and will go live by the end of the year.

Wiebe Draijer, chairman of the executive board at Rabobank, explains that when a merchant sells goods to another party and those goods arrive, the blockchain triggers a payment to take place. The aim is to move the payment into that blockchain solution, when the payment in blockchain is ready to be robust for large-scale application.

“In a statement announcing the biometric smart card, OT-Morpho emphasized its use for everyday EMV payments…”

OT-Morpho has officially announced its biometric payment card solution at this week’s Money20/20 Europe expo.

Money20/20 Europe: OT-Morpho Unveils Biometric Payment CardThe card features NFC technology for contactless payments, and is EMV compliant. Of course, the standout feature is its embedded fingerprint sensor, with the card using OT-Morpho-developed algorithms to confirm the cardholder’s identity, and biometric data stored securely on the card.

In a statement announcing the biometric smart card, OT-Morpho emphasized its use for everyday EMV payments, but also noted that could be used to “help governments distribute social benefits, knowing that they reach no one else than the eligible (proof of life) citizen.”

The company did not mention the source of the card’s fingerprint sensors, but it’s worth noting that Mastercard’s trials of biometric payment cards earlier this year used a fingerprint sensor provided by IDEX together with technology supplied by Safran Identity & Security, which has since merged with Oberthur Technologies to form OT-Morpho.

Apple Paylaunched in Russia last month in partnership with Sberbank for MasterCard cardholders, and today the mobile payments service has expanded to nine additional financial institutions in the country.

Apple Pay is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has said Apple is “working rapidly” to expand the service to additional countries in Asia and Europe.

Apple has banned Westpac bank’s mobile payments feature, which allowed customers to make payments through messaging apps including Snapchat, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

While it’s confirmed that Apple has ordered Westpac to remove the mobile payments feature, it is yet to be confirmed what the exact reasoning is for this decision.

Westpac has confirmed with its customers that the recently-launched Keyboard feature would be removed from July, despite it already being installed by tens of thousands of customers. More than that, Westpac had previously addressed security concerns with Apple, regarding the payment feature, prior to its launch in March.

Additionally, the decision comes only months after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) denied an application by NAB, CBA and Westpac to collectively negotiate with Apple over access to Apple Pay and the NFC contactless payments features on iPhones. This means that the banks cannot offer their own digital wallets on the iPhone and so far ANZ is the only one of the four major banks to strike a deal with Apple to offer Apple Pay to customers.

The bank will still be offering its Keyboard feature to Android users in the coming months.